Summary and Schedule
Overview
It’s a common scenario in the social sciences and humanities: that after research teams amass a wealth of texts, videos, and images they then endeavor to make their collection publicly available. Their usual approach involves quickly compiling a spreadsheet or employing some third-party web hosting product (that never truly does what they want) then sharing its URL.
While well-intentioned, such solutions are difficult to navigate, lack useful metadata, and, without a clear strategy for promotion and sustained engagement, drift into obscurity on the web.
This lesson guides you through creating a lightweight, open-source search and discovery system where users can find, explore, and engage with multilingual research materials. We’ll use the Google Sheets API (free) for the backend database and JavaScript (also free) for controlling search and data display on the front-end.
This lesson is based on the authors’ experience developing LACLI, a multilingual search and discovery system for freely available online resources in Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx, and Iberian studies.
Prerequisites
- Learners need a Google account.
- Learners need a foundational understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Learners need basic experience using spreadsheets like Google Sheets.
Learning Objectives
Part 1: Ethical and Multilingual Description
Standards
Understand how a description standard ensures
ethical representation of data and the importance of multilingual
access.
Part 2: Building the Search Web App
Create a
JavaScript-based website search system that allows users to effectively
search and retrieve information from a Google Sheets database.
Part 3: Action Plan for Promotion and
Collaboration
Consider linguistic and cultural diversity in
the design and implementation of the dissemination plan that works
toward reciprocity and collaboration in sharing research findings.
Who is this lesson for?
Subject liaison, digital scholarship, or data services librarians working with researchers in the social sciences and humanities. While these librarians possess domain expertise, they seek theoretical and technical guidance in creating a collaborative, multilingual search and discovery system for their research community.
| Setup Instructions | Download files required for the lesson | |
| Duration: 00h 00m | 1. Ethical and Multilingual Description Standards |
Who is your intended audience? What are their needs? |
| Duration: 00h 48m | 2. Building the Search Web App |
Based on my data, what are the functional requirements for a simple
search and discovery web app? What is an API endpoint? How can I use the JavaScript methods .get(), .filter(), and .map() to retrieve my data, filter my data, and display my data on the web app. |
| Duration: 01h 49m | 3. Translation | Why might a custom JavaScript translation be preferred over third-party translation tools for web content? |
| Duration: 02h 19m | 4. Action Plan for Promotion and Collaboration |
What are the most effective strategies for promoting a project to a
diverse and global audience? How do we foster multilingual and culturally diverse collaborations? |
| Duration: 03h 07m | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.
Dataset
Access the LACLI sample data that we will use throughout the lesson.
Web App Starting Files
This lesson provides the basic HTML, CSS, and Javascript files to start up our web app. To get these files:
- Download this zip file and save it to your Desktop.
- Unzip webapp.zip,
which should create a new folder called
webapp.